Jennifer Rubin is a real piece of work. Let’s take a look at part of her Washington Post piece on Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel.
Without specifically criticizing President Obama in his speech in Jerusalem, Mitt Romney delivered a blow to the Obama campaign’s frantic efforts to defend the president’s hostile stance toward the Jewish state simply by saying: “It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.” The Obama administration can’t even say that much, a sign of how reflectively protective of the Palestinians’ sensibilities is this president. Of course, Jerusalem is the capital. It was declared so in 1948. The Knesset is there. The disposition of its borders is a matter for final status negotiation, but only an uninformed or virulently insensitive administration would be unable to distinguish the two.
Okay. First we have the idea that the Obama administration is hostile to Israel based on their refusal to call Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Let’s deal with some facts. In 2002, Congress passed a bill that would allow American citizens who were born in Jerusalem to put the word ‘Israel’ on their passport. This was in response to State Department policy that neither Jordan nor Israel be listed on such passports. George W. Bush signed the bill but he issued a signing statement declaring that the language on Jerusalem was unconstitutional.
Section 214(d) sought to override this instruction by allowing citizens born in Jerusalem to have “Israel” recorded on their passports if they wish. In signing the Foreign Relations Authorization Act into law, President George W. Bush stated his belief that §214 “impermissibly interferes with the President’s constitutional authority to conduct the Nation’s foreign affairs and to supervise the unitary executive branch.”
The case wound up at the Supreme Court, which ruled that the bill is constitutional and remanded it back to the lower courts to reconsider the merits of the case. But the point is that President Bush refused to obey part of a law that he signed because it instructed the State Department to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Was this evidence that George W. Bush was hostile to Israel?
Ms. Rubin says that of course Jerusalem is the capital of Israel because it was declared the capital in 1948. But, by whom was it declared the capital? Because the United Nations certainly did not declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel in 1948, or at any other time. The United Nations officially considers Jerusalem to be a corpus separatum, or entity unto itself.
Considering that no U.S. government has ever legally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, hasn’t our whole political establishment been “uninformed or virulently insensitive” to Israel for over 60 years now?
But if it’s rhetorical support Ms. Rubin wants, she should remember 2008, when Obama said the following:
“Let me be clear,” Obama said, “Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper. But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” he added, in efforts to secure the Jewish vote.
So, in essence, when it comes to talking about Jerusalem, Romney is not much different from Obama who is not much different from the lesser Bush. The entirely of Ms. Rubin’s column is a calumnious lie.
It’s reached a point where one of my deepest shames is remembering the olden days when I sat around singing Hava Nagila with the rest of the lefties who were in love with Shalom Aleichem, etc., and the sentimental pull of Israel. How manipulated and naive can you get.
Now we have Zionist jihad scum like Rubin bitching that even promoting a racist theocracy is not enough to make Obama anything better than “uninformed or virulently insensitive”. The Jews I know aren’t buying any of this, since they’re intelligent and therefore know that this kind of extremism will only destroy Israel and keep the Middle East a threat to the world for the indefinite future. Being such a wanna be defender of a perverted Jewishness, Rubin should at least read what her betters like Philip Roth think about the eternal political bullshit. And the NYT should replace Rubin with someone who isn’t the Jewish equivalent of Lincoln Rockwell.
Yeah, I have very bad feelings about Zionism now. Our church, a Unitarian church, used to have seders, and we often went. I won’t go again until that wall comes down. a disgusting fascist device first invented in Warsaw and Krakow.
WTF? Go to the seders. What’s wrong with you?
When you start shunning your Jewish friends and colleagues because of Israel’s policies, you’ve gone around the bend.
Not Jewish, unitarian.
I guess you don’t get how subtle shifts in feeling work, and you’re begging the question like a Republican: he didn’t say he was shunning his Jewish friends, or that it was about Israel’s policies as opposed to the subversive activities of outfits like AIPAC and Adelson. And he was talking about the Unitarian church, which may still be sentimentalizing Israel and “God gave this land to me” crap, which it’s reasonable to not feel like lending support to.
At the end of the Seder, the traditional statement is “next year in Jerusalem”. To which I would need to add at this time “I’ll see you in hell first”.
Rubin is with the Republican rag the Washington Post, now publishing Republican party propaganda with no more than a 10-minute lag.
And didn’t Rubin admit during the primary that she was in the bag for Willard?
And this morning Romney said that jews are culturally superior to the people that they are oppressing with the wall. The per-capita income of the jews is twice as high as the per-capita income of the jewish prisoner population inside the walls.
Wow, I am simply amazed.
it’s actually 20 times higher.
Sorry about the error. When you are in prison, your ability to be an entrepreneurial warrior is diminished.
well, Romney made the error. You merely repeated it.
As some Israelis have already pointed out, he’s done a great service to antisemitism by reviving the old “rich money grubbing Jew” stereotype. All in a day’s work for Romney: managing to slander Arabic/Mideast culture as inferior while promoting the most poisonous of antisemitic memes, and all in just a few sentences. Only Willard could do it.
I can hardly wait for him to make a stop in Africa and urge them to read The Bell Curve so they can accept their natural status in the world.
Don’t forget Poland
Israel is not our friend: the CIA considers it their number one counter-intelligence threat.
Perhaps my memory is failing me, but don’t we go through this charade every presidential election year? The challenger always says that they will recognize that Jerusalem is the capital and move the US embassy there. Then once they are elected, they don’t do it because…well, because it would be stupid and pointless to do so, and real life is not a campaign.
I don’t think you’re right about that. Obama never made an embassy promise that I can remember. I don’t recall Gore doing it. Maybe Bush said that, but I don’t recall him saying it.
I googled this a little bit. Apparently Bush promised that he would do this when he was a candidate, but then backed down. You’re probably right about Gore and Obama. There’s also the fact that congress passed a law in 1995 directing that the embassy be moved. But the law contains a waiver that every president has used, citing national security.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Embassy_Act
Points, BooMan, for calling a calumnious lie a calumnious lie. Well done and the lady richly deserves the comment.